149 Connecticut schools fail to meet vaccination standards

1of15Connecticut lawmakers are considering banning all unvaccinated children from attending public or private schools starting in 2020-21.Photo: Matthew Brown / Hearst Connecticut Media

2of15Photo: Byline Matthew Brown / Hearst Connecticut Media

3of15The Connecticut General Assembly included the religious exemption in a bill passed in 1959 that made vaccinations mandatory for school attendance.Photo: Fotolia

4of15Families can fill out a form or write a letter to their child’s
school nurse or principal saying they are refraining from vaccination
based on religious beliefs.
Parents must do this before a child enters
Kindergarten and again before 7th grade, when some additional
immunizations are required.Photo: Matthew Brown / Hearst Connecticut Media

5of15In the 2017-18 school year, the most recent data available, 1,255 students in Connecticut claimed the religious exemption. The state tracks data among the Kindergarten and 7th grade classes.Photo: David Goldman, Associated Press

6of15In August, Connecticut health officials said the number of students
who refrained from getting the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine jumped by 25 percent
from 2017-18 to 2018-19 - the largest single-year increase since they
began collecting the data. The state has not yet released overall
figures for 2018-19.Photo: Mel Melcon / TNS

7of15

8of15As cases of measles continue to be reported across the U.S. in 2019, here are several facts taken directly from the Center of Disease Control and Prevention website.Photo: Journal Register Co.

9of15Before the measles vaccination program in 1963, about 3 to 4 million people got measles each year in the United States. Of those people, 400 to 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 4,000 developed encephalitis (brain swelling) from measles.Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

10of15Every year, unvaccinated travelers (Americans or foreign visitors) get measles while they are in other countries and bring measles into the United States. They can spread measles to other people who are not protected against measles, which sometimes leads to outbreaks. This can occur in communities with unvaccinated people.Photo: Eric Risberg, AP

11of15Symptoms of measles appear about seven to 14 days after infection. Measles begins with high fever, cough, runny nose, and red, watery eyes.Two or three days after symptoms begin, tiny white spots may appear inside the mouth.
Three to five days after symptoms begin, the rash breaks out.Photo: CDC

12of15There is no specific antiviral therapy for measles. Medical care is supportive and to help relieve symptoms and address complications such as bacterial infections.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

13of15Measles is a highly contagious virus that lives in the nose and throat mucus of an infected person. It can spread through coughing and sneezing. Measles virus can live for up to two hours in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed. Photo: Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press

14of15The largest outbreak of measles in the U.S. since 2000 was in 2014 when 23 outbreaks resulted in 667 infected cases. Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

HARTFORD — From 2017-18 to 2018-19, the number of schools in which fewer than 95 percent of the kindergartners and seventh graders were immunized for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jumped by 40, according to school-by-school data released by the state Department of Public Health on Monday.

Two years ago, there were 109 school buildings in which the students immunization rate for MMR was below the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended herd immunity rate of 95 percent. Last year, the total was 149.

The statewide immunization rate among kindergartners dropped from 96.5 percent in 2017-18 to 96.1 percent in 2018-19 based on revised DPH data received from schools.

The public school kindergarten student MMR vaccination rate is 96.4 percent, and the private school kindergarten student MMR vaccination rate is 92.4 percent. For students to be relatively safe from measles, the Centers for Disease Control guidelines state that at least 95 percent of kindergarten students in each school need to be vaccinated.

The immunization data for 2018-19 shows that 134 schools with more than 30 kindergarten students had immunization rates below 95 percent. At least 41 of those schools are under 90 percent. Six were below 80 percent and of those, two were in the sixties in Hartford, including Achievement First Hartford Academy (62.6 percent) and Burns Latino Studies Academy (65.1 percent).

149 Connecticut schools fail to meet vaccination standards

2of7For students to be relatively safe from measles, the Centers for Disease
Control guidelines state that at least 95 percent of kindergarten
students in each school need to be vaccinated.Photo: David Goldman / Associated Press

5of7In August, the state reported that use of the religious exemptions
from the MMR vaccine for kindergartners had increased from 2 percent to
2.5 percent. Photo: Mel Melcon / TNS

6of7According to data released last week by the CDC, the national rate
for non-medical exemptions for kindergartners was 2.2 percent, placing
Connecticut above the national rate by 0.3 percent.Photo: Steph Chambers / Associated Press

7of7In 2019, the United States has seen the largest increase
in the number of measles cases in the last 25 years.

According to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1,215 people in 30
states had contracted measles between January 1 and August 22,
including more than 1,000 in the neighboring state of New York.Photo: Fotolia

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Of the 733 public and private schools tracked by the DPH, 547 had kindergarten enrollments above 30 students, requiring them to report their immunization rates. Of those, 134 — or 24.5 percent — reported MMR immunization rates below 95 percent.

There are only 23 seventh grades below 95 percent for the MMR vaccine — which is 7.42 percent of the 310 schools reporting. Of those 23, only two were below 90 percent, including Odyssey Community School in Manchester (89.2 percent) and Jumoke Academy of Hartford (76.5 percent).

Earlier this year, the DPH released data that showed 116 schools schools with kindergarten and seventh grades with immunization rates below the 95 percent standard for measles, mumps, and rubella. That number was later revised to 109 schools with kindergarten or seventh grades below the 95 percent immunization rate for MMR.

To derive the immunization data, schools report to the DPH the total number of students in kindergarten and seventh grade in each school, and then they report the total number of students who had either shown proof of vaccination or claimed an exemption. In Connecticut, exemptions to vaccination can either be for medical reasons as approved by a physician, or for religious reasons as stated by a child’s parent or guardian.

Connecticut’s second release of school-by-school data also shows that the number of religious exemptions to vaccinations has increased.

In August, the state reported that use of the religious exemptions from the MMR vaccine for kindergartners had increased from 2 percent to 2.5 percent. That number remained unchanged in the data released Monday.

Public health officials said it’s the largest single-year increase in religious exemptions for vaccinations since the state started tracking the statewide data a decade ago.

According to data released last week by the CDC, the national rate for non-medical exemptions for kindergartners was 2.2 percent, placing Connecticut above the national rate by 0.3 percent.

“While it is good that statewide in Connecticut we are still meeting the federally recommended MMR vaccination rate of 95 percent for kindergartners, I am very concerned that the number of schools falling short of this important immunization level continues to rise,” DPH Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell said. “The data reveal that a sharp rise in the number of religious exemptions is causing declining immunization rates. This unnecessarily puts our children at risk for contracting measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Coleman-Mitchell who told reporters in late August that she wasn’t initially interested in releasing the data, said, “The decline in vaccination rates and the increase in the number of religious exemptions validates the need to release immunization rates by county and by school for the 2018-19 school year.”

Brian and Kristen Festa, the Bristol couple hoping to prevent the release of the data pending their appeal, failed to win an argument Monday morning at the trial court. Late Monday afternoon Mr. Festa dropped a last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court.

Rep. Cara Pavalock-D’Amato who argued the motion to temporarily prevent the release of data pointed out once the department publishes the data, they can’t take it back. She said she’s disappointed they didn’t even get to the merits of the case.

Superior Court Judge Susan Cobb said because she doesn’t have jurisdiction in the case she can’t enter a stay.

Cobb ruled in September that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction because the Festas didn’t exhaust their administrative remedies with the DPH.

Lamont praised the decision to release the data Monday.

“This information needs to be available to the public and lawmakers so they are not operating in the dark as they make decisions for their families and shape public policy,” Lamont said. “I want to make it absolutely clear - nothing in the data that was released today identifies any individual student. Rather, it constitutes important public health statistical data critical to the ongoing debate on this trend, which is happening not just in our state, but throughout the country.”

He said he hopes the data will help inform the debate next session. Lamont supports eliminating the religious exemption to vaccines by 2021.

Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden, said the information released Monday was unfortunate but not a surprise.

Elliott, who has been advocating in favor of eliminating the religious exemption, said he’s grateful Coleman-Mitchell has endorsed the public policy.

Rep. Liz Linehan, D-Cheshire, said the data released today tells an interesting and upsetting story.

“Not only is the amount of schools without herd immunity a concern, the disparity between kindergarten data and seventh-grade data shows that religious exemptions have skyrocketed in recent years, and that the religious exemption has been very clearly used as a philosophical one (which CT eliminated years ago),” Linehan said. “Take, for example, one school in my district. 93 percent of kindergartners are vaccinated, compared to 99.4 percent when you reach middle school. All the exemptions in the elementary school are religious, while only .3 percent of the student body, half of all exemptions, utilized the religious exemption in middle school.”

Linehan concluded that the religious exemption is being used as a tool to skirt the elimination of philosophical exemptions.

In 2019, the United States has seen the largest increase in the number of measles cases in the last 25 years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1,215 people in 30 states had contracted measles between January 1 and August 22, including more than 1,000 in the neighboring state of New York. One of Connecticut’s three cases originated from New York. There are currently no active measles cases in Connecticut.